Block Chain

Early this morning, right when doing so became legal according to local noise ordinance standards, construction began down the block, by “down the block” meaning what was being attacked by a small army of workers was the entire next block and then continuing around its far corner and down the subsequent hill. The rattling was constant, like the world’s largest coffee grinder on a coarse setting. I set about recording the goings-on, but too many other morning noises conflicted. I set down my phone and got to work. The phone and I were eventually drawn back to the window by the sort of beeping that signals a vehicle is backing up. Each time this bulbous alert sounded, everything else quieted down: traffic, footsteps, construction clatter. It was real-world sidechain, in which the relative seeming volume of one set of sounds seemed to drop in inverse correlation with the rise of another sound, in this case the warning beeps. I never did manage to get a good recording of the rattle caused by all the hammering and digging, but if there is anything I am confident of, it is that this morning will not have been the last of that.

Recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro at 9:20am on Thursday, December 19. 2026.